She hadn’t been wide awake for years
A Cautionary Tale [with a Happy Ending]: She was fast asleep when the fire started and discovered later she hadn’t been wide awake for years.
Listening for Wisdom With Evocative Images
What does this wisdom collage stir in you? Do the words or images draw you in? Do you resist them?
There are lots of ways to engage with imagery contemplatively. I’ll give you one idea you can use to listen for your inner wisdom with the evocative images collage.
Start by Clearing a Space
This practice is an invitation to be present to yourself for 10-ish minutes. What do you notice about your breath? What do you notice about the space you’re in?
When you are ready, spend as long as you’d like with this collage.
Notice Resonance & Resistance
Both resonance and resistance give us doors to open to listen to our interior.
We are often conditioned to question or hide our resistance, and our resonance with things we have been conditioned to perceive as wrong or bad.
Questions to guide your curiosity:
Did you notice an immediate felt sense of YES or NO when you looked at the image(s)?
Did a felt sense of YES or NO rise over time?
Did your experience seem neutral?
Did you notice both YES and NO?
Is this felt sense familiar to you?
What sensations in your body help you differentiate between YES and NO?
If your body feels open to it, see if you can spend more time with that felt sense. Feel free to return to the images to see if the felt sense deepens or changes.
Did the same felt sense return as you spent more time with the images?
Is there anything new that you notice?
Allow What You Noticed to Deepen
Consider recording what you noticed in a journal or exploring it in a conversation. The noticing itself is the practice, yet our sense of it might be deepened and contextualized as we open to mystery and wonder, sometimes in the presence of another.
Related Post:
Interested in making your own “wisdom collage” like the one above? Here’s a post that will guide you in the process.
Sources:
I trained with Tara Owens of Anam Cara Ministries and Dr. Shannon Michael Pater of Notice the Journey and I see their influence in this practice. Eugene Gendlin’s book, “Focusing,” and this video by Ann Weiser Cornell deepened my grasp of the concept of opening to a “felt sense.”
